So maybe first semester was a bit hectic. With the new year having just begun, there are so many goals I have set for myself. It is seldom that people actually stick to their new year’s resolutions. That is why the list I’ve come up with is attainable and realistic, so that I hopefully can stick to my goals. I hope to create an overall better atmosphere and lifestyle for myself this upcoming year. College can be chaotic at times; seemingly taking over your life. That is why I truly want to try my hardest to get through this next semester by doing the following:

I vow to try my hardest to get at least two more hours of sleep each night. More rest will most likely improve my focus and overall concentration both inside and outside of my classes.

I also hope to keep up with cleaning my room, so that it doesn’t end up looking like a tornado struck it by the end of the week. It is so easy to let things pile up. Keeping my room clutter free might also clear my mind.

I also want to keep up with the local, worldwide, and international news. It is so easy to become engrossed in your college, that you hardly know what’s even going on in the world anymore, beyond your own little academic bubble.

It’s also important to make time for exercise in college. Especially, if like myself, you want to avoid the legacy of the “freshman fifteen.” I am setting a goal for myself so that I begin to eat much healthier and exercise much more frequently this year.

Above all else, I am going to work the most on maintaining a healthy level of stress. I am a very easily stressed person, and college can be extremely stressful at times.

By maintaining all of these goals, I believe that I can make my second semester at Williams much more relaxed.

So, I challenge you all to set some goals for yourself. You’ll most likely be surprised by how much you can accomplish and change in such a short period of time if you just stay determined!

So, I’m at Harvard University. I have perfect time management skills, I’m some super-genius, and I got a 2600 on the SAT. Extra points for being awesome, of course. In my spare time, I rescue starving children in Africa. I wrote my first paper and got a A+ on it. I read Shakespeare in my sleep and spout rhetoric wisdom over lunch. I’m surrounded by super geniuses and us Hahvahd students, noses pointing towards the sky, relish in our superiority with the rest of the world. The lightbulb joke about Harvard sums it up: How many Harvard students does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One. One to hold the bulb and the world to revolve around it. 
If this were true, my life would be sooo much easier. 

So yeah, the truth is, I stayed up all night writing my comparative politics paper (I’ve subscribed to the college student’s words of wisdom- sleep no longer exists in college). I, of course, can never keep up with the thousands (ok exaggeration, but close) of pages of reading doled out every day. Time management is, to put it lightly, a bit of an issue for me (I can survive on 4-5 hours of sleep everyday, no problem)

So I’m freaking out, you would guess. Actually, I’m not. Ok, I am. That’s normal. But it’s not the end of the world. Because college isn’t just about things such as grades and tests and such. That’s part of it. You have all that, or you wouldn’t be reading this. What college is for us is the fact that we recognize that we don’t have perfect lives, or perfect SAT scores, but that we’ve put up with so much adversity and yet continue to thrive and succeed. That says more about your potential than a perfect SAT score ever will.